Death is a woman.
She cuts from the cloth of time
the shroud of kings and waits
counting each grain, each day
until
the last one falls.
Hourglass curves flow,
a granular avalanche.
Whose eyes watch them?
While steel blades swing
and ropes bind and pull,
men roar, the blood pours...

Scarlet, scarlet,
it was a scarlet hour...
The rushing recedes, leaves me
bitten by the workings
of my teeth and lips.
Regrets leak through my palms.
I raise my chin, facing the children
that sprung from the scarlet hour.

Mummy, it’s dark in here - this recess
This swirling malice caught in my optical memory
Of dark matter floating in the milky cosmos
In my alienated mind. Please…help me?
At night
These walls shiver; liquid thin they whisper
Like the breath of knives, so close, so close -
Too close....

Not haunted by my grisly dreams
Or, in
the grip of unknown fears, of
The things not seen.
But,
Wrought in the crowbar-vicious reality
Smashing wings in derision
of searing angels in death replete.
And through the oppressive streets:
Attractive...

Advertising mercenary dreams
the many
thrum of ghost town ‘evacuees'
like the zeitgeist oppression
of a room full of executives
fat-cat’s ultra pay checks - big decisions
(ruthless seditions)
what -...

These geriatric wards, housing
some meagre-life; on the slow march
like an infirmary of snails
with wrinkled feet, dragging the slime
from pools of drool
sat in the stale-stench of degrading piss
or worse still,
some laxative-aftermath.
Sometimes abandoned like chess pieces –
the...